It’s hard to believe, but yet once again we’re only a few weeks away from Easter. Six weeks to be exact. And for many of us, this will be the first, hopefully back to as close as we can get to normal Easter services we’ve had in two very long years.
Which gets me very excited, because Easter is such a great opportunity for us to share the gospel with new people who are going to visit our church, and hopefully surrender their lives to Jesus.
And who knows, maybe some of those people who left the church during Covid and haven’t made it back yet will even show up…
In the extremely paraphrased words of Moses, “Pharoah, it’s been two years, you gotta let those people go.”
Let’s move on from what we’ve lost, and focus on what’s ahead of us. Easter is the best opportunity for churches to reach new people. And over the next several weeks, my plan is to help you prepare.
No matter if you pastor a church of 30, or a church of 300, I’m going to give you some tips and tools you can use to make the most of this opportunity.
Who’s ready to get started?
There’s a lot we need to accomplish before Easter, but there’s only one place to start.
Prayer.
If connecting with God and calling out to Him in prayer isn’t our main priority during this process, then the whole thing is a waste.
It doesn’t matter how smart or talented you are, or how much money you throw at something, if God doesn’t bless it, it will never work.
So, we start with prayer.
Chances are most of you are much better at this discipline than I am, so I’m not going to give you a lot of instructions. You know what works best for you when it comes to praying, so just commit to doing it.
But I do want to give you some homework, which I’ll do each week leading up to Easter.
Prayer is a powerful thing and I believe it’s power compounds when multiple people are praying for the same thing. I’m sure you would agree.
So, this week I want you to put together a team that is focusing on praying for Easter. Pick your team based on the people within the church that you know and believe will take this seriously.
There’s no magic number for how many you should have on this team, but I think 4-8 works best. If you get too many on the team, it’s hard to stay connected with each person, and it may entice them to not follow through, because so many others are already praying.
So, pick a few people and give them instructions on what you’d like them to do. You may want to meet one night each week to pray together. Or you might want to have a certain time each day everyone commits to pray. Again, I’ll leave the logistics up to you.
The most important thing is you’re not praying alone.
Prayer is part one of your homework. Marketing is part two.
If we’re going to ask God to do His part, then we also need to make sure we’re doing everything on our end to get the word out as well.
This means we need an Easter graphic. Something we can use to promote Easter. And we need it sooner, rather than later.
Which is why I’d suggest using something someone has already created. Two of the best free options are Church Marketing University and Life.Church. Click on either one of those links, and you should find several different free options that you can take, customize, and use as your own.
If you want something totally custom to your church, I’m sure you can find someone to create it for a price, but I don’t think that’s necessary for most churches. There’s good free stuff available, so use it.
Let’s recap our homework.
- Put Together a Prayer Team and Plan.
- Find or Create an Easter Graphic to Use for Marketing.
That should be easy enough. If you have any trouble with either, send me a message and I’ll do my best to help as many of you as I can. I want this to be your best Easter ever.
